Davis Mountains Adventure

Somehow it's been 6 months since I last blogged (and that entry was a rather half-hearted one, at that!). But in those 6 months I've gotten to do so many fun things and see so many wonderful parts of Texas. Today I am sharing photos from my most recent trip out of Laredo, to the legendary west Texas.

Laredo is awfully flat. Even on the drive north on I-35 to San Antonio, the bit of rolling hills that exist are pretty mediocre compared to Oregon or even other parts of Texas. I got to drive a winding road through the Texas hill country a month ago and I fell in love even more with this state. It is so diverse....I keep on inadvertently placing Texas in a box. And then a drive like I made in the Hill country (that is the area NW of San Antonio) breaks Texas out of that box. I think that when someone has not been to Texas, he/she tends to think of it as one type of place, and for me, it was, well, desert/monte (it's what Spanish-speakers here call the brush). You know. Cowboys and Indians type of land. And then even when I've been in Laredo a year, and I know that there's more to Texas than that, I still almost forget that there is more to Texas than mesquite trees and prickly pear (the Laredo landscape--the "monte").

But I digress. So yes, Laredo's kinda flat. But as I said, there is (obviously) more to Texas than Laredo. Enter: west Texas.

I had been wanting to see west Texas for a long time. I'd heard of the legendary beauty and wildness of the Davis Mountains. Well, last week I was beyond blessed to be able to attend a special "Stars Over Our Parks" night sky training for myself and 23 other Texas Parks and Wildlife employees at the McDonald Observatory in west Texas. Thank to an incredibly generous sponsor, the 2.5 day training and all materials was totally free of charge for us; TPWD just had to pay gas.

This workshop was the best I have ever been to. I came back with an arsenal of new ideas and materials to share the sky with my park visitors. The park where I work is right in the city, and so it doesn't have very dark night skies. But in this workshop, we learned lots of activities that we can do with visitors on cloudy  nights, or even during the day.

The drive to the Davis Mountains was about 7 hours from Laredo. Luckily I was able to carpool with another park interpreter. Her park is 4 hours from Laredo, and so I drove to her park, and then she drove us the rest of the way. This was nice for two reasons: 1.) I didn't have to drive more than 4 hours. And 2.) I got to enjoy the scenery!

The mountains were pretty cool. To me it still was not quite as dramatic as, say, the Cascades in central Oregon, or the Rockies in Colorado, but it was beautiful just the same. I got to see ocatillo (a neat desert plant) for the first time in about a year; we don't have it growing in Laredo. And the star-strewn skies above the McDonald Observatory were really neat to see. I got to see a constellation I had never before seen: the dolphin. And I got amazing looks at the Pleiades (a beautiful group of 7 stars)!

Below are some pictures from my trip. 

This was the 107-inch (diameter of the lens) telescope. You can see it was eNORmous! The 82" one was even more impressive because it was in a smaller room, taking up almost the entire space. But this one was really neat as well!!!

The guy on the right, in plaid, got to move the telescope around with the joystick!!

Then I got to use the joystick to move the HUGE ceiling so that the telescope would see outside! (if the ceiling were open; we could not open it at that time because it was morning, and they try to keep the temperature inside cooler so it will match the evening temperature to prevent shrinking and expansion of the telescope elements). The dome weighed 450 tons and it moved with the touch of a joystick!

See that pulley above the doors? It had the cable for the dome ceiling to move. The entire top of that ceiling rotated.

Outside, we found a tarantula friend! He was fast.

There were these enormous grasshoppers there. The muscles in the hind legs were just amazing. Here you can see him with my room key for scale. he doesn't look that big, but there were some others that were just enormous.

Here's looking at you, kid!

Me in front of the beautiful view! It reminded me a bit of the landscape in southeastern Oregon, around Malheur.

This plant in the foreground is cholla. :) There are lots of different types of cholla. My favorite is a kind they have in Tucson called teddy bear cholla. It looks super fuzzy but the "fuzziness" is spines!!

beautiful daisies/sunflowers.  (I'm not a plant expert, obviously!)

Then we got to see the big, big, BIG telescope! It is inside this structure that looks like a mini Epcot.

whoa. This is the HET telescope (Hobby-Eberly Telescope) and it's the 5th largest in the world. You can see the tiny people up on the teal jungle-gym-like structure. They are doing renovations on this telescope.

We got to see the control room. This whiteboard was right outside the hallway. It reminded me of doing chemistry or physics homework in college!

I took a walk in the early evening and spotted this gorgeous snake sunning himself against the wall!

He had beautiful coloration!

turns out it was a Big Bend Patch-nosed Snake! You can see the funny scale on the tip of his nose, for which he is named. New life herp for me!!!

Another shot of the gorgeous landscape. It was a bit windy there, as evidenced by my crazy hair!!

That evening I played around with the settings on my camera and was able to take a surprisingly good shot of the moon!!

I stretched my legs at Seminole Canyon State Park, about halfway between the Observatory and Laredo. I spotted this perky Say's Phoebe there!

Seminole Canyon is a place I definitely want to go back and visit more thoroughly! To go down into the canyon itself, you must be on a guided tour. There is a LOT of cool rock art from ancient peoples there, too, that I want to go back and see.

When I first saw this Rock Wren, I had to think for a minute to identify him! I hadn't seen a Rock Wren in a long time.

I should hope it'd be prohibited!!!

These next few photos are ones I took with my phone camera while my friend was driving.

It's mountains!

I really wish I had been able to better capture this. There were cottonwood trees changing from green to yellow along the canyons, and they were just lovely.

Wow!

more beautiful mountains.

Even though it was really, really neat to see west Texas and the Davis Mountains for the first time, it was very tantalizing, because I did not have much spare time to explore. The training was Wednesday through Friday, and almost every hour was accounted for. I am absolutely planning to go back. My boyfriend and I want to go back and explore the back country!